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Feb 26, 2007

Eggless Dry Fruit Cake

I haven't been baking cakes and cookies for a while. But ever since I saw delicious, scrumptious cakes on Sowmya's Home Spices and Seema's Recipe Junction, I have been craving for those. I could not resist any further.

I had a cake recipe for the caramel cake popularly called as plum cake in South Indian Bakeries. These cakes do not have any plums in them! but that's they are called! The recipe I had was just a starter for me. It had eggs and loads of sugar and butter. I did my own substitutions and changed quite a lot of it making it a low sugar and low fat cake. The end results were good. Just loved this cake. The recipe also called for adding 4 tbsp of caramelized sugar which I did not add.

dry fruits to fill the cake, a handful of each of the following
cashews
walnuts
raisins
chopped pitted dates
tuti-fruity - crystallized papaya bits, available in Indian stores

to line the cake tin
1 tsp butter
2 tsp flour

Preheat the oven to 350° F. Prepare the cake tin or a loaf pan, rub butter on all sides and dust it lightly with flour. Shake off and remove the excess flour.

Chop the nuts, dates and mix together with raisins and tuti-fruity. Add a tsp of flour to this and shake well to coat all the dry fruits with flour. Pour on a strainer and shake of the excess flour. This helps them keep suspended in the cake batter without sinking to the bottom. A little trick I learnt from Chef John from Everyday Food on PBS.

In a bowl mix to together all the dry ingredients and set aside. In another bowl whisk together condensed milk, milk and oil. Mix in the prepared dry ingredients. Fold in the dry fruits gently.

Pour into prepared loaf pan or cake tins.

Bake for approx 30 mins till the tester inserted at the center of the cake comes out clean.
Cool off on the wire rack till its completely cool.

Enjoy!

I like my cake lean, so I use olive oil. You may use butter, add some extra butter to make the cake moist. Add more sugar if you have sweet tooth. Top it with cool whip. Enjoy as you like.

Updates
The original recipe from which I adapted is a QA on Ammas.com. Its the second answer here

30 comments:

Wow Manjula .......I was waiting for a cake recipe which had condensed milk in it and egg less too. I am going to try it right away. I have all the ingredients right away. Tell me what is the difference in using olive oil /butter in this cake. For less fat right? Nothing else. I miss the fresh plum cake from Mumbai bakeries which have tutti fruti in it. Thanks for posting.

ah... do u remember the taste of plum cake from popular bakery and prema bakery in puttur? i love eating it with vanilla ice cream. it tastes heaven. my roomies in hostel always asked me get plum cake and we used to clean the plate with dollop of vanilla ice cream:)

Hey Manjula, this is a wonderful recipe, I have condensed milk and all the other ongrdienties (except the walnut). Wud it be ok to use peanuts? I was waiting to prepare an eggless proper cake, I had posted a eggless cake with tofu recently, but I guess this is much much better than that. Thanks for the recipe.

rv,It is ok to skip walnuts. You may use dry fruits with combination of your choice. I never tried this with peanuts. Guess they will be just fine. But use toasted/crunchy peanuts, raw ones may be soft.

Manju,I am gonna try this cake today. Just a query. What is caramelized sugar? Can I use brown sugar here? My hubby likes sweet so I guess I would go ahead by adding sugar. If you could answer this I will be glad to try it out right away.Thank you so much girl.

Seema,Caramelized sugar is sugar cooked till its deep brown.Refer this link on Kitchen Hints & Tips for a detailed explanation on how to make at home.

Brown sugar is partially refined sugar, its different from Caramelized sugar. Some recipes do use brown sugar in cakes, I heard it keeps the cake moist. You can try using brown sugar in this recipe. I am not sure if you can make caramelized sugar from brown sugar though.

anju,Thanx for the great recipe. I made it yesterday and I added 4 tbsp of normal granulated sugar. It took me about 50 mins to bake at 350 but the end result was awesome. Came out just like yours. Thanx buddy for the yummy recipe.

Hi Manjula I am saraswathi thiagarajan whose recipe you have mentioned as the basis for your cake.The caramelised sugar is just to give that extra color. Though my recipe gives a rich taste nowadays after coming to this country I make lot of healthy versions. In each table spoon of condensed milk it has 11gms of sugar.It is also loaded with sugar. To cut the sugar one can use more fruit content. May be you could have seen my recipes in Tamil magazine Thendral from USA.Thanks for your recipe.

Hi Saraswathi Thiagarajan,Nice to get a comment from you. I used to browse a lot of ammas.com few years ago and have seen a lots of advise from you on many topics. They are really fantastic.

Thanks for the update on your cake recipes. I dont know tamil. Are your recipes in any website? Do you have a blog? If not, I strongly suggest you start one. With your knowledge on varied subjects I am sure you have a lot of fans ..I am one of them :)

Hi Manjula,I tried your cake recipe on my birthday. The cake was a great hit with my family and friends.As a variation, I added unsweetened cocoa (about 2 Tbsp) for a nice chocolate flavor. Absolutely loved the recipe…thanks a lot.

Sounds yummy!!! I've soaked a kilo of dry fruits (cashews, walnuts, dates, raisins) in white rum and am planning to have the cakes baked at the local bakery. At the last moment, we've decided to go eggless! Could you please help me and let me know the corresponding measurements of the other ingredients.

Hi Anshu,I am very very sorry, i wont be able to help you with that. I experiment with different recipes and post the ones that came out good. I am not an expert baker. I suggest you refer to that link I have to where my recipe is based on.